The Haematobic EP

Cash-grab promotional EPs like these are always annoying as hell to me. I mean, what's the point of this: one exclusive track (which is a cover anyway), a couple from the following full-length album, a re-recorded track from the first album, and some live material which no one cares about. Seriously, what's the point? Even if all the material is good you can get more of it on the ensuing full-length, so the only purpose of this is to generate money and expand the band's discography. Whatever.

The tracks which would appear on 'The Archaic Abattoir' are good if you like that: they show off Aborted's then-new fusion of melodic death/metalcore and brutal death/grind, and they're fun, though not the best tracks from that album. The Entombed cover is an Entombed cover: it wasn't particularly exciting in its original form and Aborted doesn't do a lot to expand upon it. The re-recorded track is serviceable death/grind, and though I haven't heard the original, I somehow doubt that a great deal was added in the redux. The live material, which I suppose could theoretically be the main draw here, is terribly produced, sounding like it cam from a handicam somewhere in the mosh pit. A soundboard recording it is not, and renders the tracks' presence meaningless.

If you have 'The Archaic Abattoir', there's no reason to get this, and if you don't... well, why don't you? Skip this and buy the actual album it's promoting, jackass.

Wow, this is fucking heavy, the vocals are sick as fuck, and the guitars have an awesome thick, dirty tone to them.
There's also a huge difference between the gory vocals, and the scream-until-your-head-explodes vocals. The gory growls are so much better, and are suited to the music much more, but the screams aren't too bad at all.

The riffing is excellent, as ever, but it seems like the guitars and bass is far too high in the mix, because you cannot hear the fucking drums at all. Just this constant pound of dirty riffs, and the occasional cymbal sound in the background. This first song definately makes me say this is heavier than any Aborted I've heard.

The second song is an awesome cover of Entombed's 'Drowned' and features more over-powering guitars and bass, which doesn't allow you to hear the drums very much, unless they're blastbeating. The vocals are still as sick as ever, and the guitar still has its dirty tone.

With the third song, we're back with Aborted's gruesome song titles. We're treated to yet another sick song, but this time there's more screamed vocals than what I like. A couple of minutes into the song there a fucking awesome guitar solo, that starts off slow and then fucking shreds away at your brain.

The fourth song continues the same old Aborted ritual, which the previous songs had, with the sick vocals and dirty guitar tone, but this time it's a little bit more progressive, as the guitars do things you probably won't have heard Aborted do before.

Both the live songs suffer from having the bass far too fucking loud/high, and that's all you can really hear, apart from the vocals which just seem to be there, and this time you can hear the drums more often than the studio tracks. Still, these live recordings could have been so much better.